Coronation riots

The coronation riots of October 1714 were a series of riots in southern and western England in protest against the coronation of the first Hanoverian king of Britain, George I.

Upon the death in August 1714 of the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne, Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, ascended the throne in accordance with the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701 that excluded Anne's half-brother James Francis Edward Stuart. After his arrival in Britain in September, George promptly dismissed the Tories from office and appointed a Whig-dominated government.

On 20 October George was crowned at Westminster Abbey but when loyalists celebrated the coronation they were disrupted by rioters in over twenty towns in the south and west of England. The rioters were supporters of High Church and Sacheverellite notions. The Tory aristocrats and gentry absented themselves from the coronation and in some towns they arrived with their supporters to disrupt the Hanoverian proceedings.

The celebrations of the coronation—balls, bonfires and drinking in taverns—were attacked by rioters who sacked their properties and assaulted the celebrants. Henry Sacheverell—who was on a 'progress' in the West Country—was mentioned by most of the rioters. At Bristol the crowd shouted “Sacheverell and Ormond, and damn all foreigners!”; in Taunton they cried “Church and Dr. Sacheverell”; at Birmingham, “Kill the old Rogue [King George], Kill them all, Sacheverell for ever”; at Tewkesbury, “Sacheverell for ever, Down with the Roundheads”; at Shrewsbury, “High Church and Sacheverell for ever”. In Dorchester and Nuneaton, Sacheverell's health was drunk.

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